Julian Thomas

Julian Stewart Thomas FSA (born 1959) is a British archaeologist, publishing on the Neolithic and Bronze Age prehistory of Britain and north-west Europe.

Thomas is co-director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project – a collaborative archaeological study begun in 2003 as a consortium of university teams, funded by the AHRC and the National Geographic Society.

During excavations of sites surrounding Stonehenge – including Stonehenge Cursus, the Avenue and Woodhenge – Thomas found evidence of a large settlement of Neolithic houses, at Durrington Walls, nearby and discovered the prehistoric henge and stone circle, known as "Bluestonehenge", on the west bank of the Avon.

[5][6][7] Thomas speculates that the 25 bluestones at Stonehenge – originating in the Preseli Hills, 250 kilometres (160 mi) away in modern-day Pembrokeshire, Wales – stood in a circle, surrounded by a henge, at Bluestonehenge for around 500 years before being dismantled and moved to their current location around 2500 BCE.

[8] Thomas has been Vice President of the Royal Anthropological Institute since his election in 2007 and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (also since 2007).